A 12-step program for world peace

February 12, 2019

Bob Dock­horn, my pre­de­ces­sor as Friends Jour­nal senior edi­tor, has been doing a lot of writ­ing since he’s retired and one of his big projects involves a vision of a world free of its addic­tion to vio­lence. Some­where in the process he lost a step (there’s only 11).

Hav­ing been raised a Friend, I assume a hope­ful stance toward the future. Unlike many oth­ers, we gen­er­al­ly pre­sume that the human world is not meant to be adver­sar­i­al. Even deci­sion mak­ing by vot­ing is reject­ed among Friends as unnec­es­sar­i­ly con­fronta­tion­al. Friends par­tic­i­pate in local and nation­al elec­tions, but often with mis­giv­ings since these con­tests, law­mak­ing, and even courts can be set­tings in which priv­i­lege is pre­served and fought for.

One evening a few years ago, as I sat in silence at Southamp­ton (Pa.) Meet­ing, my atten­tion turned to a 12-Step poster on the wall, left behind by a Nar­cotics Anony­mous group that meets week­ly in our space. As I stared at it, I expe­ri­enced a flash of insight — that our entire cul­ture is addict­ed to com­pe­ti­tion and violence. 

I appre­ci­ate how the steps start sim­ply (“Clear One’s Pre­sump­tions,” “Access Mul­ti­ple Sources of Infor­ma­tion”) and then build into pro­pos­als that seem pie-in-the-sky “(Trans­form Mil­i­tary Insti­tu­tions,” “Imple­ment World Gov­ern­ment”), espe­cial­ly with cur­rent world trends. But that’s the nature of a jour­ney: it starts with steps but main­tains vision toward a destination.

Group decision making and moral disengagement in the context of yearly meeting schisms

June 11, 2018

Group deci­sion mak­ing and moral dis­en­gage­ment in the con­text of year­ly meet­ing schisms

This is an aspect of group dis­cern­ment and con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing rarely dis­cussed among Quak­ers. Like­ly this is because the pre­sump­tion is that in wor­ship­ful busi­ness meet­ings the pre­sump­tion is that deci­sion mak­ing is Spirit-led. It is a noble ide­al and one that I have seen in action. And yet, it is also a dynam­ic that can be sub­ject to abuse and as such ought to prompt some self-examination and pos­si­bly some inten­tion­al safe­guards into meet­ing processes. 

http://​quak​er​lib​er​tar​i​ans​.wee​bly​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​g​r​o​u​p​-​d​e​c​i​s​i​o​n​-​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​m​o​r​a​l​-​d​i​s​e​n​g​a​g​e​m​e​n​t​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​c​o​n​t​e​x​t​-​o​f​-​y​e​a​r​l​y​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​s​c​h​i​sms

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Profiting on empire

April 10, 2018

We think of slav­ery as issue that tore Friends apart as the con­sen­sus on its accept­abil­i­ty shift­ed in our reli­gious soci­ety. A review of a book shows that in the U.K., gun man­u­fac­tur­ing under­went this shift: Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Industrialization

On its face, the deci­sion by the Soci­ety of Friends to cen­sure a fla­grant arms mer­chant in its ranks may not seem sur­pris­ing. Paci­fist prin­ci­ples were cen­tral to Quak­er ide­ol­o­gy, as was oppo­si­tion to slav­ery. Guns fueled not just war but the slave trade. Yet Mr. Galton’s father, and his father before him — and indeed many oth­er Quak­ers who long dom­i­nat­ed Birmingham’s arms indus­try — had been unapolo­getic gun­mak­ers for 70 years with­out attract­ing rebuke. What had changed in the inter­im, in ways that are deeply inter­re­lat­ed, were soci­ety and the guns themselves.

Today the debate on guns in the U.S. is focused on assault weapons being used by indi­vid­u­als but the Gal­ton debate is more about the role of a Quaker-produced prod­uct in war. Britain of course was an empire, an empire held togeth­er by force of weapons. Some per­cent­age of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in Britain was financed by war and its prod­ucts often were employed over­seas in the main­te­nance and exten­sion of the empire (I’m think­ing for exam­ple of trains).

When I first read John Wool­man I was struck by his call­ing slav­ery a prod­uct of war. I usu­al­ly think of it as a human rights and dig­ni­ty issue (and of course it was and Wool­man was par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the human dimen­sion) but it was also a type of high­ly orga­nized war­fare. See­ing the sys­temic nature of the trade as a whole let Friends bet­ter see the unac­cept­abil­i­ty of slav­ery — and impe­r­i­al weapons manufacturing.

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

Paint­ing for Worship

The not-so-ancient Quaker clearness committee

February 28, 2018

I could prob­a­bly start a col­umn of Quak­er pet peeve of the day. I espe­cial­ly get bent out of shape with mis­re­mem­bered his­to­ry. One peeve is the myth that Quak­er clear­ness com­mit­tees are ancient. These com­mit­tees are typ­i­cal­ly con­vened for Friends who are fac­ing a major life deci­sion, like mar­riage or a career. Park­er Palmer is one of the most well-known prac­ti­tion­ers of this and gives the best description:

For peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced this dilem­ma, I want to describe a method invent­ed by the Quak­ers, a method that pro­tects indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty and integri­ty while draw­ing on the wis­dom of oth­er peo­ple. It is called a “Clear­ness Com­mit­tee.” If that name sounds like it is from the six­ties, it is — the 1660’s!

While it’s true that you can see ref­er­ences to “being clear” in writ­ings by George Fox and William Penn around issues of ear­ly Quak­er mar­riages, what they’re describ­ing is not a spir­i­tu­al process but a check­list item. By law you could only get mar­ried in Eng­land under the aus­pi­cious of the Church of Eng­land. Quak­ers were one of the groups rebelling against that. This meant they had to per­form some of the func­tions typ­i­cal­ly han­dled by cler­gy – and nowa­days by the state. One check­list item: make sure nei­ther per­son in the cou­ple is already mar­ried or has chil­dren. That’s pri­mar­i­ly what they meant they asked whether a cou­ple was cleared for mar­riage (Mark Wut­ka has found a great ref­er­ence in Samuel Bow­nas that implies that the prac­tice also includ­ed check­ing with the bride and groom’s parents).

One rea­son I can be so obnox­ious­ly defin­i­tive about my opin­ions is because I have the Friends Jour­nal archives on my lap­top. I can do an instant key­word search for “clear­ness com­mit­tee” on every issue from 1955 to 2018. The phrase does­n’t appear in any issue until 1969. That arti­cle is by Jen­nifer Haines and Deb­o­rah Haines. Here it is, the debut of the con­cept of the Quak­er clear­ness committee:

We were chal­lenged repeat­ed­ly to test our lives against our beliefs. We labored long over con­cerns raised by our belief in the way of peace. We agreed to urge that each Month­ly Meet­ing, through a clear­ness com­mit­tee or oth­er com­mit­tees, take the respon­si­bil­i­ty for work­ing through with Friends the ten­sions raised in their lives by the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny. To this com­mit­tee could be brought prob­lems cre­at­ed by draft or employ­ment in insti­tu­tions impli­cat­ed with the mil­i­tary and the ques­tion of whether appli­cants for mem­ber­ship who find them­selves in oppo­si­tion to the peace tes­ti­mo­ny should be accepted.

The con­text sug­gests it was an out­growth of the new prac­tice of wor­ship shar­ing. I did do a deep dive on that a few years ago in a piece that was also based on Friends Jour­nal archives. Deb­o­rah Haines con­tin­ued to be very involved in Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence and I worked with her when I was FGC’s Advance­ment and Out­reach coor­di­na­tor and she the com­mit­tee clerk.

In the ear­ly 1970s the ref­er­ences to clear­ness com­mit­tees con­tin­ued to focus on dis­cern­ment of anti­war activ­i­ties. With­in a few years it was extend­ed to prepa­ra­tion for mar­riages. A notice from 1982 gives a good sum­ma­ry of its uses then:

Meet­ings for clear­ness, for friends unfa­mil­iar with the term, are com­posed of peo­ple who meet by request with per­sons seek­ing clar­i­ty in an impor­tant life deci­sion — mar­riage, sep­a­ra­tion, divorce, adop­tion, res­o­lu­tion of fam­i­ly dif­fer­ences, a job change, etc.

Notably absent in this list is the process for new mem­ber appli­ca­tions. The first use of the term for this process in the FJ archives came in 1989! Why did it take twen­ty years for the con­cept to be applied here?

Why does it mat­ter that this isn’t an ancient prac­tice? A few things: one is that is nice to acknowl­edge that our tra­di­tion is a liv­ing, breath­ing one and that it can and does evolve. The clear­ness com­mit­tee is a great inno­va­tion. Decou­pling it from ancient Quak­erism also makes it more eas­i­ly adapt­able for non-Quaker contexts.

Wor­ship shar­ing came out of the long­time work of Rachel Davis DuBois. I would argue that she is one of the most impor­tant Quak­ers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. What, you haven’t heard of her? Exact­ly: most of the most influ­en­tial Friends that came out of the Hick­site tra­di­tion in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry did­n’t devel­op the cult of per­son­al­i­ties you see with Ortho­dox Friends like Rufus Jones and Howard Brin­ton. It’s a shame, because DuBois prob­a­bly has more influ­ence in our day-to-day Quak­er prac­tice than either of them.

Oth­er links: This has turned into an awe­some thread on Face­book (it’s pub­lic so jump in!). There was also a good dis­cus­sion on wor­ship shar­ing on Quak­erQuak­er a few years ago: When did Quak­ers start wor­ship shar­ing? Back in 2003, Deb­o­rah Haines wrote about Rachel Davis DuBois for FGCon­nec­tions, the awe­some mag­a­zine that Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz used to pro­duce for FGC. I post­ed it online then, which is why I remem­ber it; Archive​.org saved it, which is why I can link to it.

Caveats: Yes there were Quak­er process­es before this. On Face­book Bill Samuel quotes the 1806 Faith and Prac­tice on the mem­ber­ship process and argues it’s describ­ing a clear­ness com­mit­tee. I’d be very sur­prised if the 1812 process had any­where near the same tone as the modern-day clear­ness or even shared much in the way of the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­ning. I decid­ed to pop over to Thomas Clark­son’s 1806 A Por­trait of Quak­erism (dis­cussed here) to see how he described the mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion process. I often find him use­ful, as he avoids Quak­er ter­mi­nol­o­gy and our some­what unhelp­ful way of under­stat­ing things back then to give a use­ful snap­shot of con­di­tions on the ground. In three vol­umes I can’t find him talk­ing about new mem­bers at all. I’m won­der­ing if entry into the Soci­ety of Friends was more the­o­ret­i­cal than actu­al back then, so unusu­al that Clark­son did­n’t even think about.

“Darn Good Intelligence”

July 15, 2003

The Wash­ing­ton Post has a remarkably-wrong asser­tion by George W. Bush. The Pres­i­dent says he decid­ed to start the war after he gave Sad­dam Hus­sein “a chance to allow the inspec­tors in, and he would­n’t let them in.”

Memo to Bush: Hus­sein did let them in (they were there when U.S. troop buildup start­ed in the Mideast). Over the last few weeks the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has had a lot of trou­ble keep­ing its ali­bis straight but now the Pres­i­dent him­self is just being out of touch with real­i­ty. (This is start­ing to feel like the glo­ry days of the Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion.) He con­tin­ues to bul­ly real­i­ty out of the way, despite the expo­sure of forg­eries and the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction:

“I think the intel­li­gence I get is darn good intel­li­gence. And the speech­es I have giv­en were backed by good intel­li­gence. And I am absolute­ly con­vinced today, like I was con­vinced when I gave the speech­es, that Sad­dam Hus­sein devel­oped a pro­gram of weapons of mass destruc­tion, and that our coun­try made the right decision.”